Omar Musa

Omar bin Musa (born January 9, 1984) is an Australian award-winning author, poet and rapper.

Quotes

• We try to portray ourselves as a very egalitarian society, the land of the fair go…But I think that we are quite segregated. And class exists in Australia – it’s much more slippery and hard to get your hands on than in other places where it’s more structured and stratified. But it’s there.
  • On Australian society in “Omar Musa, Australia's star slam poet, brings 'in-betweener' perspective to US” in The Guardian (2016 Feb 17)

• I’ve always grown up as an in-betweener…Malaysian hyphen Australian, between really a working-class town, ‘struggle town’, and a really privileged private school, between secular and religious – even Queanbeyan is known as part city, part country.
  • On his background in “Omar Musa, Australia's star slam poet, brings 'in-betweener' perspective to US” in The Guardian (2016 Feb 17)

• I think Australia’s sense of itself is very insecure, very shaky. And what I see around us is constant simmering tension and some kind of violence beneath the surface of this country.
  • On how he views Australia as a whole in “Omar Musa, Australia's star slam poet, brings 'in-betweener' perspective to US” in The Guardian (2016 Feb 17)

• People think of hip hop as a very angry art form and in many ways that’s true – there is a certain type of danger and aggression – but there’s also a coolness and a funkiness from back where the breakbeats started. I was drawn to its ability to allow you to let free the tempestuous emotions within you, whether they be anger or pain. All of us have those emotions and feelings within us and there was something about the chunky, bodily beats of hip hop that drew me into expressing myself in that way…
  • On choosing hip hop as a medium of expression in “Hannah Hall Interviews Omar Musa” in the Cordite Poetry Review (2017 Feb 1)